John 7:37–53
Read the passage.
Sometimes I wonder if the things Jesus says and does are more for the Gospels being written down after the fact than for the immediate context that He says and does them in. During the Second Temple period, the water-drawing ceremony was a time of celebration and joy among the Jews. The high priest would walk from the temple down to the pool of Siloam to fill a golden ewer from the water there. Then he would take it back up to the temple and pour it out as a drink offering on the altar. This ceremony isn’t in the Law of Moses at all, but the rabbis who started the practice pointed to Isaiah 12:3 as their justification, and it was therefore linked to the idea of God pouring out His Holy Spirit due to other references to the pool of Siloam in other scriptures.
When the ceremony was performed on the last day of the feast this particular year, Jesus announces to the crowd that He is the one who provides the living waters in people’s hearts, through belief in Him. John tells us that He was referring to the Holy Spirit, but not everyone who heard Him would have made the connection, I think. Some did, though, because they immediately believed Jesus was the Christ, though they may have had a faulty understanding of what that meant. Others thought He was the “prophet like Moses” who was foretold.
The officers of the temple guards report to the priests and Pharisees, and their exchange is pretty funny. “Why didn’t you bring him?” (He’s right there in the temple. We want him arrested.) “Because no one talks like him!” Yeah, maybe they should have paid more attention to what He said, then.
The disdain the Pharisees had for the regular folk comes out at this point. They say anyone who doesn’t know the law like them is accursed, i.e. damned. They really believe that Jesus is leading people away from a true relationship with God, but their pride in their own knowledge and piety has blinded them to their twisted hypocrisy. Nicodemus attempts to moderate his fellows by reminding them of due process in dealing with criminals and agitators, but the others accuse him of being on Jesus’s side for daring to defend Him even a little.
Immerse us in living water from Your well of salvation so that we can live for You.